At their recent board meeting, the Pennsylvania Board of Game Commissioners made some changes to several hunting seasons and bag limits. 
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For starters, the PGC made two changes to the after Christmas extended firearms season for antlerless deer. First, the extended firearms deer season will be open to all Deer Management Assistance Program properties statewide from Dec. 26-Jan. 24, 2026. Secondly, the extended firearms deer season will run Jan. 2-19, 2026 in WMU 4C where CWD was recently detected. 

Additionally, the statewide archery bear season is being shortened from three weeks to one week. The archery bear season will run Oct. 18-25. The archery bear seasons in WMU 2B, 5B, 5C and 5D will retain their longer formats. 

As for the elk season, hunters applying for an elk license will now be required to buy a hunting license first. Previously, a hunter could draw an elk tag can then purchase a hunting license. 

Secondly, a hunter will no longer be required to include their Social Security numbers or hunter ID numbers on applications because by first purchasing a hunting license, the ID number will already be in the licensing system. 

Thirdly, no more than 10 percent of available elk licenses in any given year will be awarded to nonresidents. In previous years it was a as high as 13 percent which drew concerns from resident hunters. 

Fourth, any hunter drawn for a bull elk license will be ineligible for another. Previously, a hunter who drew a bull elk license could, after five years, enter the bull tag drawing again in hopes of getting selected a second time. Added to this, and beginning on Jan. 1, 2026, any applicant who draws a bull tag will be ineligible to apply for a bull tag ever again. Those who drew a bull tag prior to Jan. 1, 2026, still are eligible to draw a second bull tag using the bonus points they’re already accumulated. They won’t be able to enter any new bull elk license application after that date. However, those who draw a bull tag after Jan. 1, 2026, will retain their bonus points but they would be applied only to drawings for a cow tag going forward. 

While on the elk topic, 140 elk licenses (65 antlered, 75 antlerless) were allocated across three 2025-26 elk seasons. For the one-week general season to run Nov. 3-8, 30 antlered and 38 antlerless tags have been allocated. In the archery season open only in select Elk Hunt Zones, to run Sept. 13-27, 16 antlered and 11 antlerless licenses will be available. There will be 19 antlered and 26 antlerless licenses available for the Dec. 27-Jan. 3 late season. The deadline to apply is July 13. 
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As for antlerless deer licenses for all WMUs, they will be guaranteed to Pennsylvania residents as long as they buy them before 7 a.m. on Monday July 7 when the first round of license sales opens. All totaled, 1,312,000 licenses will be allocated for the 2025-26 seasons, which is up from 1,186,000 allocated for 2024-25. And antlerless license numbers for sale for local WMUs are as follows with last years allocation in parenthesis: *WMU 3D, 52,000 (41,000); WMU 4C, 51,000 (53,000); WMU 5C, 67,000 (79,000).

​The Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) has released the 2024-25 deer harvest estimates and they show an eleven percent increase over the previous year. 

According to the PGC, hunters harvested an estimated 476,880 deer of which 175,280 were antlered deer and 301,600 were antlerless. This is in comparison to the 2023-24 season when 430,010 deer were taken. 

The 2024-25 buck harvest was up two percent over the year before and over the most recent three-year average. 

Th 2024-25 antlerless harvest increased 17 percent over the year before and 21 percent over the three-year average. 

David Stainbrook, PGC Deer and Elk Section Supervisor said,” harvest estimates can fluctuate from year to year due to a number of factors, so we caution reading too much into annual variations in harvest. The trends are a truer picture of what’s going on as we manage deer over six-year population trends,” he explained.  

In case you’re wondering how the PGC deer estimates are calculated, they use antlered and antlerless harvest reports submitted by hunters in combination with data from deer checked by crews at processors across the state. Steinbrook added, “Last season hunters reported 147,000 deer online while PGC personnel checked more than 27,000 deer at processors around the state. And across the state, about 28 percent of hunters took antlered deer which is the highest rate since at least the late 1980s. That has become the norm since the implementation of antler point restrictions and most of those bucks were older ones. In addition, two of every three were at least 2.5 years old. That’s a huge change from decades ago when most of the harvest was made up of 1.5-year-old deer,” he cited.   

As for antlerless deer, hunters turned about 26 percent of their tags into a harvested deer which is consistent with past seasons and about 69 percent of those were adult females. 

Looking at harvests per season, the PGC reported firearm seasons resulted in the largest harvests. It accounted for an estimated 283,760 deer taken that consisted of 86,000 antlered and 197,230 antlerless deer. 

Archers took an estimated 87,540 antlered and 90,600 antlerless while muzzleloader hunters got an estimated 1,210 antlered and 13,770 antlerless deer. 

Here are the estimated harvest numbers by local Wildlife Management Units for 2024-25 with last year’s numbers in parentheses, plus popular Potter County (WMU 4A), and with antlered deer noted as (Ant) and antlerless as Atl): 

*WMU 3D: 56,000 Ant (6,200), and 7,700 Atl (7,300)
*WMU 4A: 4,000 Ant (5,700), and 9,200 Atl (9,300)
*WMU 4C: Ant 8000 (8200), and 12,000 Atl (6700)
* WMU 5C: 7,700 Ant (9,100), and 17,000 Atl (13,000)
*WMU 5D: 2,300 Ant (2,900), and 7,700 Atl (6,700)

Other WMU numbers can be found on PGC’s website at www.pgc.pa.gov.







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